Most agree that taxpayers should pay police well for risking their lives in the line of duty.

But should they be paid for the time they spend strapping on their gun belt and bulletproof vest? Or tying their boot laces? What if the department insists they dress in the stationhouse, instead of at home?

Hundreds of Orange County Sheriff’s deputies sued the department between 2005 and 2012, saying they spent up to 30 minutes getting dressed before work, and up to 28 minutes undressing – and they weren’t getting compensated.

Donning and doffing, the legal term for putting on or taking off work clothes, made headlines last month when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a steel company couldn’t be forced to compensate its workers for the time it takes them to put on safety gear such as flame-retardant jackets and pants.

In the case of Sandifer v. United States Steel Corporation, the high court ruled most of that safety gear was a form of clothing. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the court said, employers cannot be required to pay workers for donning work clothes unless both sides agree to that as part of a union contract.

The county has paid $727,500 to settle a civil rights lawsuit by a South County woman who accused sheriff’s deputies of storming her house, slamming her face into the ground, taking her to jail and seizing her children – all because she refused to answer the door.

Nancy Butano’s lawsuit – stemming from her arrest Feb. 2, 2010, inside her home in SanJuan Capistrano – is one of a series of excessive force complaints against South County sheriff’s deputies that have cost Orange County taxpayers more than $5.7 million in settlements and verdicts in the past four years.

County officials say this case provided some lessons for the Sheriff’s Department. The department has retrained deputies to be more cautious when entering homes without warrants. Additionally, the department ended its longtime practice of automatically jailing people picked up on suspicion of resisting arrest instead of citing and releasing them.

“Has the department gotten better at holding people accountable? The answer is yes,” said Steve Connolly, the head of the county’s Office of Independent Review, which monitors the Sheriff’s Department. “The department has come a long way in terms of using these litigation issues as a basis for examining its practices and identifying shortcomings.”

The 2010 incident began when deputies Charles Stumph, CoryMartino and Alexandra Flores were called to the home on Via Ordaz after neighboring gardeners complained they were threatened by a man with a knife, according to a case summary by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

A Cudahy man held for months in the cold case killing of an off-duty prison guard has filed $30 million in damage claims against Anaheim and Orange County, saying he was labeled a "cop-killer" and repeatedly beaten by law enforcement.

Attorneys for Rafael Garcia Miranda said in the claims that he was "falsely detained, falsely arrested and falsely imprisoned" in the 1998 murder-for-hire of corrections officer Elizabeth Begaren.

County jail records show Miranda, 46, was held between Feb. 12, 2012 and May 25, 2012. He was also held for a week in Anaheim city jail. Charges were dismissed in August 2012, mainly because of exculpatory evidence found by prosecutors and Anaheim police.

Miranda has filed a $20 million claim against the county and a $10 million claim against Anaheim. A claim is typically a precursor to a lawsuit.

Miranda lost his drywall job and was "routinely victimized and beaten by members of law enforcement as a purported cop-killer when respondents knew...that claimant had no involvement whatsover" in Begaren's death, the claims said.

On a drizzly Thursday morning, a week after Thanksgiving, county Supervisor Janet Nguyen stood under a canopy in a Little Saigon parking lot, backed by police, sheriff's and probation officers, to speak to a gaggle of print and broadcast media.

A banner on Bolsa Avenue in front of the Asian Garden Mall.

Responding to a spike in reports of thefts and burglaries from automobiles in Westminster and Garden Grove, Nguyen announced that she had brought together four county and city law enforcement agencies and persuaded them to jointly put up $30,000 to pay for new signs to remind shoppers and residents to hide their valuables and lock their cars.

The permanent signs, which will say "Hide it, lock it or lose it" in both English and Vietnamese, weren't ready yet, so in the meantime, temporary banners have gone up in parts of Nguyen's first supervisorial district saying: "This holiday season – be safe, protect yourself! Hide your things! Lock your car! Brought to you by: OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen."

The banners were paid from the same $30,000 put up jointly by the the county sheriff's and probation departments and the Garden Grove and Westminster police departments. Beneath Nguyen's name, the logos of the County of Orange and each participating agency appear.

You may remember our recent Watchdog post that took Orange County Sheriff's deputies to task for dozens of minor traffic accidents involving county vehicles. We looked at the records for 558 accidents and were surprised to find a high number of deputies hitting guard rails, posts, parked cars and - in a few cases -- other patrol vehicles.

We noted that damages were mostly minor and that sheriff's vehicles logged 8.4 million miles last fiscal year -- the only official mileage given to us by the department.

The post has brought a strong response from the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs. Spokesperson Kimberly Edds, who once wrote for the Watchdog, called our review "inherently flawed."

"Of course deputy-caused accidents do happen, especially with the enormous amount of distractions that are built into driving a technologically advanced law enforcement vehicle....Deputies are human beings, too. They make mistakes and are held accountable for their mistakes."

Forget the Starsky and Hutch road maneuvers, some Orange County sheriff's deputies seem to have a hard time with the simplest tasks, like backing into and out of parking spaces, according to records detailing 558 crashes involving department cars between January of 2009 and June of this year.

OCSD vehicles logged 8.4 million miles last fiscal year, but had only a few injury collisions. The vast majority of accidents recorded in more than 1,000 pages of reports were minor fender benders caused primarily by inattention, sometimes in the sheriff's own parking lot.

At least eight times during the review period, patrol cars rolled into other objects after deputies exited the vehicles without putting them into "park." In one incident, a patrol car left idling Feb. 25, 2010, with a canine named "Tupper" inside "spontaneously reversed," wrote the deputy, hitting the lattice patio enclosure at Adriano's Pizza in Westminster.

At least five times, deputies drove away from gasoline pumps with the nozzle still in the tank.

On a few occasions, deputies caused accidents or rear-ended other vehicles because they were using their mobile data screens, looking at a cellphone, turning up radios or otherwise distracted, according to incident reports.

This list, from a survey done by the Association of California Cities – Orange County (a sort of conservative break-away group from the League of California Cities, which lobbies on behalf of the burgs in Sacramento), put Costa Mesa in the No.1 spot (top base monthly salary of $8,329 a month and a monthly total of $13,998 after pension payments, benefits and special pay are added in); the Orange County Sheriff's Department in the No. 2 spot (top base monthly salary of $7,308, with total of $13,968 including benes)and Huntington Beach in the No. 3 spot (top base monthly salary of $7,274, with total of $13,966 including benes).

Several departments said those numbers are not quite right.

'WE'RE NOT NO. 1!'

Costa Mesa says its entire top tier -- the "senior officer" rank -- is being phased out, and there are only two officers left in it. They do make $8,329 per month -- but after they leave, the top monthly base salary will be $7,932 (or $397 less than now).

George Jaramillo, the former assistant sheriffand convicted tax-evader, has settled his wrongful termination suit for a total payout of $947,618 by the County of Orange.

Best of all for Jaramillo, he won't have to pay it back to the county.

In November, an appeals court upheld Jaramillo's claim that his former boss, ex-sheriff and convicted witness-tamperer Mike Carona, fired him improperly in 2004. The court ordered the county to pay Jaramillo more than $362,000 in lost wages and retirement income.

In February, the California Supreme Courtlet that ruling stand. County Supervisors voted in March to offer Jaramillo a settlement.